What You Might Be Missing When Testing Payment Gateways

Payment gateways are important aspects of any eCommerce website. They’re required to approve payments made online through credit/debit cards or net banking and maintaining their correct and steady performance is key to the success of your business. Payment gateways typically work by encrypting payment information, authorising the payment from the bank or financial institution and then passes that information in a secure channel to the merchant.

A lot of usability testing companies have payment gateways on their agendas when testing websites and their functionalities. This is because testing payment gateways is unlike testing other aspects of a website or application, and requires strict planning and diligence as it deals with sensitive information, authorisation and encryption. This is why payment gateway testing involves constant bouts of apprehensions, planning and a clear strategy for execution.

Here are five of the most important things you can incorporate into your payment gateway testing strategy:

1. Functionality

Functionality is usually the primary concern when testing payment gateways. It is important to keep the following checks in mind when going about the functionality testing aspect:

• Does the website or application display all the options of payment such as Credit Card, Debit Card, Net Banking, Cash Card?
• Are taxes, charges and deductions that may be region-specific, being applied and calculated accurately?
• Are the customers and merchants being notified of transactions through their email?
• Are the language and currency format being changed as per the customer’s request?
• Are any error messages during an unsuccessful or incomplete transaction being displayed correctly?

2. Integrations

The next obvious thing to think about for testing is that the integrations of your payment gateway with different credit cards and banking services work correctly. This largely covers the online services connected to different bank servers and hence it involves following points:

• Does it hook up with the proper bank/financial service?
• Does it request and respond with the correct information to and from the banking server?
• Does it process the right amount within the right currency format from the banking server?
• Does it complete the whole process on time and within the correct order?

3. Security

Well, security is the most vital aspect when it involves testing payment gateways. It’s quite difficult to maintain your online transactions safe from cyber-attacks, penetration activities, and vulnerabilities. Thus, following things should attend the list of payment gateway security testing.

• Is it immune from cross-site scripting, SQL injections, and spoofing?
• Is it data-manipulation and URL-manipulation proof?
• Does it contain user roles and authorization management?
• Are the online services, data and data flows connected to banking servers encrypted?
• Are proper SSL certificates and safety access points implemented at each transaction stage?

4. Database

The database is again a crucial aspect for a successful working of a payment gateway. All the data stored at the backend of payment gateway contributes to the successful completion of transactions through payment gateways and hence, these are some of the key aspects to have in mind while testing payment gateways:

• Is customer information like name, address, contact number collected & stored properly?
• Are the credit//debit cards, banking and cash wallet entries collected and stored properly?
• Are the databases stored within the proper format with the proper access?
• Are the database files manageable by the authorized users from the designated places and networks?

5. Performance

Performance is yet one more aspect to be included in testing payment gateways. To realize the specified performance benchmarks, all you’ve got to try to do is consider the subsequent testing criteria:

• Does it work during load times?
• Does it work across different environments?
• Is the load balancing component configured correctly with the gateway?
• Does it contain proper memory, space and network across the server for accurate functioning?

These points make for great starting aspects of payment gateway testing. Most usability testing companies delve deeper into the specifics but if you’re looking for a head-start, this is the way to go. Once this initial level of testing is thoroughly planned and documented, you may need to dig deeper and identify important areas of testing as per your requirements. You may also want to invest in the right testing tool for the job or, consequently, look for a reliable and reputed usability testing company to help you complete your payment gateway testing.